Starter Story - Starter Story’s Sunday Breakfast #36

Good morning and happy Sunday.

To make the weekend more enjoyable, we're delighted to share the Starter Story's Sunday Breakfast 🥞 with you.

What is the Sunday Breakfast?

It's 5 bite-sized case studies to motivate you for the week ahead. You can read it in 2 minutes or less.

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And now, enjoy this week's stories!

1. The orange juice 🍊

This solo non-technical founder started a $14K/month SaaS

Did you know there are around 1 billion spreadsheet users in the world?

And every day, millions search for how to create a specific formula.

That’s where this AI-powered spreadsheet tool comes in.

This founder put together a super scrappy website as quickly as possible, and that was good enough to go viral on Reddit and TikTok.

That traction pushed him to build a proper version of the tool using no-code tools only. The first sale arrived in minutes.

Read this super detailed case study to know how all went down.

He also shares tons of tips to succeed in working with TikTok influencers and other nice tips and hacks.

2. The coffee ☕️

This mom went from casual blogger to making $192K per year

Writing online since 2005, she knows a thing or two about creating content.

Today, she now runs several blogs and has also created different courses that complement the ads and affiliate revenue.

My favorite part? Pretty good email marketing tips. She talks about opt-ins, list segmentation, strategy, and more interesting stuff!

2a. The fruit bowl 🍌🍓🍏

Want to unlock more money-making business ideas?

Try Starter Story for just $1 and access 4,000+ real-life case studies and 8,000+ business ideas, and a community of doers that will support you and help you succeed.

Discover how real founders:

a) Came up with business ideas that make money

b) Launched their businesses (even while working a full-time job)

c) Got their first customers and what exact strategies they used to generate cash as quickly as possible

All the systems and strategies to build a successful business can be learned, so why not learn them from others who have already done it?

3. The eggs 🍳

These first-time founders started an $840K/year business with $300

Today their marketplace holds over $40M of in-stock inventory and has done nearly $2M in lifetime sales.

How have they done that? They quickly did everything possible to become self-taught SEO experts. This industry is restricted from running social and search ads, so organic traffic is paramount to the business.

4. The toast 🥪

How this young founder built a $40K/month Shopify app (After failing 3 times)

Each failed Shopify app provided him with more insights that brought him closer to success.

Two major lessons learned:

Leverage Shopify Facebook groups and communities to read people’s problems and questions and validate his app idea.

Be obsessed with metrics. Track everything. Observe how users behave to spot and tackle issues.

5. The pancakes 🥞

This very specific course generates $35K/month

What I love about this case study is that it combines two very attractive elements:

(1) Online courses: Very cheap to produce, teach and distribute. A product with very high margins.

(2) A very specific topic: Sustainability is trending. Companies are spending more money to be greener, and at the same time, it’s a niche topic that allows you to establish yourself as an expert figure and gain authority.

Starting a company that offers training to other companies and professionals sounds like a very big, expensive, and not very precise project.

Launching a sustainability online course feels like something you could achieve with very few resources and start making money rather quickly (these founders did it in 3 months).